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Preview
New York and Cleveland Chamber Music Societies meet up at CSU on November 16

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by Daniel Hathaway

Two chamber music societies will come together on Tuesday evening, November 16 at Cleveland State University's Waetjen Auditorium, when the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center appears on the next concert in the Cleveland Chamber Music Society's Series.

Moving from its two regular venues in order to take advantage of CSU's multiple pianos and large stash of percussion equipment, CCMS has planned an exciting event featuring duo pianists Gilbert Kalish and Wu Han, and percussionists Daniel Druckman and Ayano Katoka in Dmitri Shostakovich's Concertino, op. 94, George Crumb's Music for a Summer Evening (Makrokosmos III) for two amplified pianos and percussion, and Bela Bartók's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion.

Gilbert Kalish and Wu Han performed separately in Cleveland last season, Kalish as soprano Dawn Upshaw's collaborator on a Mixon Hall Masters Series concert, and Wu Han with violinist Philip Setzer and cellist (and husband) David Finckel in a concert of Schubert Trios, also on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society series.

The two found themselves on the same stage on October 22 at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, but after rather than during a performance. The occasion was a surprise celebration of Mr. Kalish's 75th birthday and his 40th anniversary on the Stony Brook faculty at the end of a concert he played with the Emerson Quartet. Wu Han presented him with the first copy of a set of two CD's of the complete Brahms Piano Quartets, comprising performances Mr. Kalish had done with the Emerson at the San Francisco Bay area's Music@Menlo festivals beginning in 2003 (ceremony pictured below). The CD will be soon be available from the Stony Brook music department as well as from Music@Menlo. The musicians donated their services so all proceeds from the discs will go to another of Mr. Kalish's surprises that night — a graduate scholarship in his name at SUNY Stony Brook.

The pianists' appearance at CSU begins with an entertaining curtain-raiser by Shostakovich written to be performed by the composer and his 16-year old son. Then they'll roll up their sleeves and be joined by two percussionists for some heavy lifting.

Mr. Kalish brings a special kind of experience to George Crumb's piece, having premiered it with James Freeman, Raymond DesRoches and Richard Fitz at Swarthmore College in March of 1974. In addition to amplifying the two pianos, Crumb requires the performers to employ "extended techniques", and among other things to use paper and rosin and slide a drinking glass along the strings to create various effects. Listeners who would like to experience the work in advance can download mp3 files from a performance Gilbert Kalish and Wu Han did last summer at the Music@Menlo Festival (photo above, by Tristan Cook). It's a large zip file, but well worth the download and unpacking time.

Bartók's Sonata was the direct result of the success of his Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, first performed by the Basel Chamber Orchestra in January, 1937. The Sonata received its first performance almost exactly a year later, and both works were well-liked by the Swiss audiences on their first hearing. The composer later turned the work into a version for four soloists and full orchestra, but the 1938 piece is pure chamber music with intimate interactions between the four players. As Bartók wrote in Essays,

These two percussion parts are fully equal in rank to one of the piano parts. The timbre of the percussion instruments has various roles: in many cases it only colors the piano tone, in others it enhances the more important accents; occasionally the percussion instruments introduce contrapuntal motives against the piano parts, and the timpani and xylophone frequently play themes even as solos.

The Sonata also invokes night sounds, especially in the second movement, but is otherwise imbued with the rhythms and melodic flavors of Bartók's native Hungary. Mr. Kalish plays the work with Lee Luvisi on a 1994 Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center recording which also includes Dohnányi's Serenade in C, op. 10 and Kodály's Serenade, op. 12 with various other chamber musicians.

Read Robert Finn's program notes for the November 16 performance here. Tickets for the concert in Waetjen Auditorium at CSU on Tuesday, November 16 at 8 are available from the Cleveland Chamber Music Society at $30 for adults, $28 for seniors and $5 for students. At those prices, everyone should grab a student or three and treat them to what looks like a thrilling evening of not-your-usual-chamber-music. 

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